Praia Health

Praia Health is a digital health software company that sells a patient experience orchestration platform to health systems. The product gives patients a single login and unified journey across a health system's portal, third-party digital point solutions, and AI and automation tools, with deep links that route a patient to a specific task rather than a generic landing page. Core components described by the company include a digital patient record designed to connect fragmented data sources and enable identity-driven personalization, mobile and web consumer applications, integration tooling for health system systems of record, and analytics for providers.

Around this identity layer, Praia adds ongoing patient engagement across email, SMS, push notifications and chatbot, coordinated outreach and campaign management, and plug-and-play integrations with an ecosystem of third-party digital health vendors. The company positions the platform as sitting on top of, and increasing utilization of, a health system's EHR while keeping the experience under the health system's own brand rather than the EHR vendor's. Stated buyer outcomes are patient retention and loyalty, new patient acquisition, reduced administrative burden on call centers and staff, and consolidation of fragmented digital assets to reduce cost and technical debt.

The underlying platform, the Praia Health Identity and Engagement Platform, was launched inside Providence's digital innovation group incubator in 2022 and handled approximately 3.5 million user accounts at the time of the company's 2024 spin-out.

Founding story

Praia Health was created inside Providence to address disconnected, impersonal digital patient experiences. Doug Grapski, then part of the Providence Digital Innovation Group, drove the incubation process from ideation through commercialization, and Billy Jackson led the product development team that built the Praia Health Consumer Platform and oversaw the migration of more than 3.5 million user accounts onto it. Justin Dearborn, previously CEO of Merge Healthcare and of PatientBond, became founder and CEO.

Business model

Praia Health licenses its orchestration platform to health systems as enterprise software, supported by implementation services, hosting and support operations. It also operates an ecosystem partner program through which third-party digital health vendors' solutions are made available within the platform, and channel partnerships that route the product to health system buyers.

Enterprise software sold to health system organizations, with the company emphasizing measurable ROI from higher engagement and reduced operating costs; specific pricing terms are not disclosed.

Traction

The company reports platform-level results with leading health systems including $48 million in measurable ROI over two years from improved engagement and reduced operating costs, a 200% increase in campaign conversions, a 106% lift in portal adoption, three times higher care gap closure rates versus SMS outreach, and a 52% increase in bill pay engagement following integrated lab order notifications. At spin-out the platform handled approximately 3.5 million user accounts, and 17 digital health partners had joined its ecosystem partner program.

Latest developments

In April 2024 Praia Health emerged from Providence as an independent company with $20 million in Series A funding led by Frist Cressey Ventures, with proceeds earmarked for expanding platform capabilities, and named a board including Justin Dearborn, Navid Farzad, Yuanling Yuan and Sara Vaezy.